Martin Creed: I’m like a naughty little boy

Modest outlook: Martin Creed refuses to class himself as an artist, simply saying he makes things for people to look at (Picture: Alastair Muir)

It may be unimaginative but there really is only one way to introduce Martin Creed: as the man who, in 2001, nabbed the most notorious Turner Prize on record for Work No. 227: The lights going on and off. The clue to the piece is most definitely in the title.

It hurled Creed into the spotlight and divided critics, who either saw him as a potent minimalist or a derivative charlatan. But there is much more to Creed than that one installation, as a new retrospective at the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery – the most exhaustive survey to date of his 25-year career – aims to show.

Creed, clad in black mac and hat, apologetically wipes his chair before sitting down in a windowless Southbank rehearsal space. The Glaswegian has many phobias and is never without a pack of wipes. So many of his works hinge upon repeated processes, patterns and progression that I can’t help wondering if they somehow represent a kind of obsessive working through of various underlying fears.

‘I think that must be the case,’ he says. ‘I’m sure everyone has their own things – it’s like your own religion almost, your own ritual.’

Yet, conversely, there is another, more visceral side to Creed’s work: exhibition-goers are warned to expect ‘nudity and adult content’. So what is the impetus for films of vomiting and defecation? His answer, at least, is cerebral. ‘I think vomiting is a good metaphor for working – because it’s quite difficult and horrible but you feel better afterwards,’ he says.

Work No. 88: A sheet of paper crumpled into a ball, 1995 (Picture: Martin Creed)

Creed often infuriates people. Pieces such as Work No. 79: Some Blu-Tack kneaded, rolled into a ball, and depressed against a wall (1993) inspire the repeated cry: ‘How can this be art?’ But Creed – who readily admits ‘I get really hurt when people are negative’ – short-circuits such criticism with a refusal to even class himself as an artist.

‘I don’t know what art is,’ he says, ‘so I don’t like using that word. I make things and do things, and often if I make things for people to look at, people call it art.’

Creed also makes music with his band, admired by the likes of The Cribs and Franz Ferdinand, and says he sees no difference between this and his visual productions. Asked who he most admires as a contemporary artist, he plumps for Vic Reeves and Steve Coogan.

‘Art must surely be all the best things that people make,’ he says, ‘and that can be TV as much as a painting by Da Vinci.’

Work No. 960: Cacti (Picture: Martin Creed)

Yet Creed has been embraced by the Establishment as one of its darlings. Tate bought his Turner work last year and he was involved in the Cultural Olympiad – particularly with Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes.

He admits he craves recognition and acceptance. ‘I desperately wanted to win the Turner Prize,’ he says, ‘and I definitely felt validated by it. It’s an institutional stamp of approval.’

But does he nonetheless enjoy causing controversy? ‘Yeah, I must do,’ he considers, ‘like a naughty boy. I am all for trying to do what you are not supposed to do.’ The tabloid press, where he tends to be reviled, is his favourite place to read about art. ‘Everything has got an obvious slant to it,’ he says, ‘and I don’t believe there are any neutral stories. All writing is creative writing.’

What with all the slipperiness of definition, the equal embrace of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art and the rebuttal of objectivity, talking to Creed can sometimes feel like swallowing a guide to postmodernism whole. But if there’s anything he fears, it’s being accused of pretension or of inflating his own ego.

‘One of my biggest fears is deluding myself,’ he says. ‘But it’s also almost impossible to live without kidding yourself to some extent – because otherwise life would be terrible. You have to have some kind of confidence, which is probably built on sand.’

The Hayward show’s title, What’s the point of it?, is also the name of a song by Creed. ‘It’s a question I often ask myself,’ he says. Anyone coming to this show for uncomplicated affirmation is unlikely to leave with what they’re after. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘that there isn’t any point to it.’

What’s the point of it? opens at the Hayward Gallery on January 29. Creed’s new album, Mind Trap, is released on CD and iTunes on the same day.